The Disability History Association and the University of Illinois Press are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2026 Outstanding Dissertation in Disability History Prize is Elizabeth Maher for her currently titled project, “Building Mechanical Boys: A Raced and Gendered History of Autism in the United States”!

Dr. Maher received her PhD in history from the University of Illinois Chicago in May 2025. Her research draws on ideas of disability justice, and neurodiversity to explore how various actors have reified, or challenged existing ideologies about race, gender, and class in making claims about disability. She is passionate about making history accessible to diverse communities and is interested in developing disability history resources for undergraduates and K-12 students. Her writing has appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly and on disability blogs including Crip Crap and Rooted in Rights.

“Building Mechanical Boys: A Raced and Gendered History of Autism in the United States” is a study of how discourse around autism served as a means of propagating changing views on race, gender, class, disability, intelligence, productivity, potential, and ultimately the definition of humanity in the mid- to late 20th century United States. Maher explores the (re)construction of autism as a diagnosis associated with white technocratic masculinity, a process that was reliant on the bodyminds of those labeled as autistic but which was, especially prior to the 1980s, dominated by psy-professionals (those in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis) and parent advocates who often defined autism against their own presumed normality.

More information on the Outstanding Dissertation in Disability History Prize here.

More information on the Disability Histories series here.